“Fighting is one thing, but bad jokes is where I draw the line.”
- Lt. Moses Hightower, Police Academy 6: City Under Siege
The comedic devolution of the Police Academy series is nearly complete. The first Police Academy was an adult-skewing “slobs vs. snobs” comedy, perhaps a little too reliant upon other such movies, but at least its heart was in the right place.
Police Academy 6: City Under Siege is in contrast a film which would best appeal to a mentality under 5-years-old. What sort of audience could be expected to keep along with these movies? Was any of City Under Siege’s viewership familiar with the first?
For all the Police Academy turnover, in terms of writers, directors, hell, even the cast, it is a surprise that City Under Siege comes from the noodles of Part One’s writers, Neal Israel and Pat Proft. You’d think the men partly responsible for the original festival of raunch and podia fellatio would be able to reinstall some purpose into this crumbling series, to ensure longevity through a reaffirmation of bad taste in favor of unsophisticated bumbling.
But whatever audience there was for Police Academies in 1989 knew nothing of that tone, so instead the screenwriters crank out a children’s film, for all intents and purposes. And even the jokes are few on the ground – in terms of sheer comic density, this is the laziest of the bunch by far, and even a manic wreck like Citizens on Patrol had an energy to it. But despite a lack of identifiable jokes (rather, it’s assumed returning characters acting in character will be funny in and of itself), City Under Siege follows a peculiarly illogical stream-of-consciousness mentality which could only come of a childish mindset which finds It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World too subtle.
The premise: Criminals commit crimes. The cops must stop them.
The premise, with a little more detail: The Wilson Heights Gang, a trio of terrifying middle age white guys named Ace, Flash and Ox (which also sums up their personalities) is committing a spree of robberies throughout an…an unnumbered precinct, because a 6-movie series which could never name its own city surely cannot be expected to assign a double-digit number. Whatever, it’s Harris’ precinct (G. W. Bailey, why?!). Caving to political pressure from the mayor, Harris does the unthinkable, and recruits Commandant Lassard’s team (George Bailey, for when Leslie Nielsen is unavailable) to stop the crime wave.
In its foundations, City Under Siege is nothing unique in the annals of Police Academy, most closely resembling Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment in structure – and that one had been the outlying black sheep, for a complete lack of Academy-based foofaraw. So it’s a movie about police doing police work, and you’d think a franchise with the word “Police” in the title could manage that more often than 1/3rd of the time!
To this lukewarm puddle of generic, stale rehashing, the cast appears completely unchanged…practically. Among the 11 leads, all have been in former entries, and many of them. Let’s see, how does this go…
EVERY movie: Larvell Jones (Michael Winslow), Moses Hightower (Bubba Smith), Eugene Tackleberry (David Graf), Laverne Hooks (Marion Ramsey), and of course Commandant Lassard. So five of ‘em in six movies. Oh, and Commissioner Henry Hurst too (George R. Robertson).
Five movies: Debbie Callahan (Leslie Easterbrook). As a Police Academy fixture, she was lacking from the mostly Academy-free First Assignment. Also Lt. Proctor (Lance Kinsey), because he wasn’t in Part One.
Four movies: Captain Harris, seeing as the role of “self-promoting, bigoted, hateful, misdirected antagonist policeman” was filled by a character named Mauser in First Assignment and Back in Training, though for all intents and purposes we’ve had the same basic guy in every movie.
Three movies: Well, Douglas Fackler (Bruce Mahler) sat out Parts Three through Five, due to general uselessness. He rejoins his team here, in the officially rotating final slot recently vacated by “House” Conklin, and with an actual schtick this time: He is disaster prone. More on that anon.
Two movies (yeah): Just Nick Lassard (Matt McCoy), because he was Assignment Miami Beach’s Steve Guttenberg replacement, here transplanting from Miami to Never Once Named City and edging even slightly more into Guttenbergian territory – i.e. the smart, “normal” one whose appearance bores me. And who has a subtle mania for glue and potentially-lethal anti-Harris pranks, unprovoked.
This is what they’ve got to work with, and without a significant-enough premise (i.e. a location switch) to accommodate new gags for old gagmen. How will City Under Siege continue to wring sour goo from this tapped-out…entity? Simple! There are no jokes.
…Okay, that’s not fair. The good guys (so basically everyone listed above, excepting Harris and Proctor) are no longer allowed to act the fools. There’s been a subtle (in Police Academy terms) evolution of Lassard’s team throughout, as they gain competence, edging ever nearer to being genuine police-humans. So no more do they look the fools, even when they might absentmindedly screw things up. No, through their absentmindedness, either they succeed (say, foiling a crime inadvertently), or wreak devastation upon Harris and his entire benighted existence…or seriously injure third party passersby. That is mostly Fackler’s department, as his “joke” is to essentially explode anyone near him who is not a returning cast member.
With this upturning of what is comedically allowable, the only butt of the joke (excepting Fackler’s untold collateral) is the duo of Harris and Proctor. Sure, you might say, these characters have been suffering at the hands of the protagonists ever since Part One. What’s new? Well, they still endure such vengeance, doled out by the hands of a cruel and unjust pagan god also known as series producer Paul Maslansky. But far more often now, it is their own fault when mishaps hap. The series has been edging in this direction, but it’s hard to laugh at a bumbling comic antagonist in the Harris mold, when he no longer deserves any sort of comeuppance.
Take for instance an assignment this sub-Abbott & Costello duo is granted, ostensibly as an effort to sniff out the Wilson Heights Gang. They become undercover window washers. Now, the Harris of Part One (let us ignore Proctor’s lifelong imbecility, which earns him “villainhood” while it’s earned most other leads adoration) was infinitely competent; he’d succeed at this chore with flying colors, unless Steve Guttenberg came along and upended him. By Part Six, Harris managed to self-inflict pratfalls and fall off the building. On his own! I understand the hero/villain dynamic insists all laughter be at Harris’ expense, but this is conceptually impure.
The strange thing is, none of the other characters are treated any more seriously, they just aren’t themselves the source of jokes. So, for instance, Hightower’s strength is still ridiculously exaggerated. Jones can still use his voice to perfectly replicate any imaginable noise. Tackleberry is still an unreconstructed gun nut. Et cetera. (Old hat.) But now, these traits are treated somewhat like minor superpowers, possibly in response to how the cartoon “Police Academy” went about its business during its two-season run of inanity. Boy, seeing people triumph due to caricatured, one-dimensional, cartoonish properties – that is what makes City Under Siege seem most like a kids’ movie, as even its story elements buy into the ridiculousness with a straight face. But in an unamusing way.
So City Under Siege severely under-delivers in terms of comic density. How does it fill out its time? With plot, which is verily a bold new experiment for Police Academy. From the get go we have a villain, not a comic grotesque like Part Two’s Zed, or the “idiots lose bag, must get bag” tomfoolery of Part Five, but distinct foes working for an unidentified Mastermind, himself a sort of cheapjack variation on Number One in Thunderball. And their scheme is a convoluted one, necessitating Nick’s fullest mental powers – because they only now postulate that Nick is a little brainiac.
Basically, the Wilson Heights Gang intends a real estate scam, to devalue property all along a rail line, then buy it up cheap and make a profit later. Actually, it appears much simpler here than how City Under Siege parses out this info. The weirdness comes from the Gang’s efforts to devalue. Initially, it seems they’re accomplishing this through a spree of unmotivated, random burglaries. (Ah, jewel thieves, the default villain of all bad crime comedies! Also some good ones.)
But when the Gang creates a neighborhood-wide blackout one fine evening, resulting in rioting and looting that’s have some punch to ‘em had this been filmed in L.A. sometime after 1993, we realize this is the moment property values plummet (eh, that or they could wait until 2008). This renders all their crimes up ‘til now totally purposeless. Rather, those robberies were only good for getting the cops suspicious, for directing the story – Woe to the plotline which forces events into place to give its protagonists a leg up.
Their dastardly schemes fall apart even more towards the end – Oh someone strangulate me now! I’m dissecting the plot holes in a Police Academy sequel! The Mastermind turns out to also be the Mayor (Kenneth Mars, a genuinely funny man who was in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein and The Producers – and I spent much of this movie with my jaw agape like the audiences in that picture). So…the Mayor is using his political position for corrupt personal gain? Yeesh, he should’ve moved to Chicago! It turns out he’s even on his second term, which totally doesn’t jibe chronologically with the newly-appointed female mayor posited at the start of Police Academy, a mere five years earlier – But these are the sorts of minor errors which just prove I’ve been following these dreadful atrocities closer than the filmmakers were.
Okay, so the stupid thing about the Mayor being the genius behind the blackout: He appointed Lassard’s crew to stop the crime spree. He is only foiled because he told the heroes to do so! GAAAAAH!
Alright, so much of the movie spools along joke-lightly, awkwardly arranging the plot elements so Nameless Mayor can have his mighty blackout in Unnamed City. Whatever comedy there is does not play well, for familiar reasons: Apart from Part One’s Hugh Wilson, every Police Academy director comes from a TV background, and it shows. Peter Bonerz is no exception, with a misunderstanding of the necessities of feature length comic timing. Though he does provide the heartiest (i.e. only) laugh of the picture: His name. Ah, unintentional lulz!
There’s a little more comic goodness on display, in fact, and I’d be remiss not to mention it. “Man of 10,000 Sound Effects” Michael Winslow totally redeems himself, after a couple of entries of coasting on his old material. How does he do that? Well, mid-blackout, he settles down a rowdy comedy club – by performing his patented standup routine. You know what, movie, you’re in dire straits when the actor, left to his own devices, is infinitely funnier than you are.
As a counter example, here’s what the writers do with Winslow’s vocal mechanics: In a fight against Flash (which is staged more like an actual fight than anything attempting humor, where I mostly cannot even I.D. joke attempts), Winslow’s Jones dresses up like a robot. (Don’t ask.) He pulls a sort of RoboCop routine, and thus Flash flees. Because in these movies, a man can legitimately think he is fighting an android. Because every Police Academy character is gullible, and dim. This is an example of a joke stretched too far, as all the obvious applications for Winslow’s abilities dried up long ago.
The general tone of their fight – ridiculous, unbelievable, but never trying to be humorous – extends into the entire climax. Like many a Police Academy sequel, the climax is an excuse to let loose with a chase scene too outrageous for even a Roger Moore film. Here, it’s a three-way car chase, between a cherry picker, a municipal bus…and Bigfoot (the monster truck, not the monster). This is just strangeness for its own sake. And it all plays out like the stupid version of that one chase in Terminator 3, our heroes causing untold scads of collateral damage to no one’s concern, until it ends.
Until the movie as a whole just up and ends, shortly after the Mayor’s confession fashions a devastating black hole of logic.
It’s hard to say Police Academy 6: City Under Siege represents, artistically, the point at which these movies should have stopped. They shouldn’t have started in the first place. No, accepting producer Maslansky had dedicated himself to a one-per-year schedule, come inspiration or story or no, an end to the Police Academy movies would only be justified by poor box office take. Well, it seems by Part Six, hardly a moron remained among American filmgoers, as a $11 million gross marked the stopping point. Profitability was no longer to be had, at least not at such a breakneck pace. The series went into a five year hiatus, nearly as long as the time separating Parts One and Six already. It broke that silence at last, astoundingly making City Under Siege NOT the final Police Academy – though it may as well have been.
RELATED POSTS
• No. 1 Police Academy (1984)
• No. 2 Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985)
• No. 3 Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986)
• No. 4 Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987)
• No. 5 Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach (1988)
• No. 7 Police Academy: Mission to Moscow (1994)
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